Wormerine

Baldurs Gate2 is very Bioware - I absolutely loved it for so many years now, but I wonder how I would react to it now. Black&white morality, and shallow characters didn't bother me that much at the time. Both KOTOR2 and Alpha Protocol, while broken, were very creative, doing something original and surprising.

I take the opposite view where those "empty" areas provide an opportunity for exploration. To me exploration suggest there is something interesting to find (well constructed encounter, quest, unique event, nice location). Many of the wilderness locations were quite dull, with dull combat encounters. Hmm, well exploration means travel into the unknown in order to learn about it. The key work being travel. You don't have to find something deep and interesting every other minute; this isn't a music video. I'm fine with so-called "dull" wilderness locations because they highlight the interesting locales. That's what travelling the wilderness is like, and in that sense they're much like similar areas in Baldur's Gate. My preference would have been to include more such wilderness areas with a few interesting highlights. ok, the thing is I don't disagree. I like exploration, I like discovering thing. But I also don't like padding - just to be clear, I don't think Pillars had this problem. My issue with the "exploration" in PoE was that I rarely found something interesting. The special events were tied to quests, and therefore I knew I will find them there before venturing to said location. I was rarely surprised. Instead, I would just spent time looking for the objective without finding anything else worth finding. There were some cool stuff (Bleakwalkers in Margran Fork... and... a cave, and... Fulvano stuff... yhhhh... nothing else comes to mind) but not nearly enough for my taste. Just a lot of trash mobs, from which you don't get experience from defeating and which aren't too engaging to fight. I make it sound very bad. It wasn't bad.

Like what? I thought most areas had a point to them. If there wasn't much to do in an area, then it was only trying to emulate BG1's exploration. Pearlwood bluff is a good example - you have a short interaction related to companions quest, and a cave enterance. Location sie isn't particularly interesting, not much to find. i did feel like they designed outdoors locations with one side quest in mind, and didn't manage to add more content to fill those areas. White march did things much better. With much varied locals, more things to find, unique encounters, interactions, quests. It's been a while since I played BG1 but I remember them all being quite engaging (might be younger me talking though). Having more word building behind them. I can't put my fingers on it, but BG did feel more to me like an openworld game. PoE wilderness areas felt more disconnected and empty. Not all of them. But pearlwood bluff, searing falls, "road maps" leading to Raedricks keep... not brilliant.

I take the opposite view where those "empty" areas provide an opportunity for exploration. To me exploration suggest there is something interesting to find (well constructed encounter, quest, unique event, nice location). Many of the wilderness locations were quite dull, with dull combat encounters.

I imagine he meant without expansions. I remember him saying that they were happy with the size of PoE but they want deadfire to have more depth, be more reactive. As far as playtime/amount of maps: I doubt Obsidian themselves know. Seems like a right approach to me. Many of the locations in PoE felt unnecessary, empty. i will take engaging content over arbitrary "size".

On the other hand CDPR ignored/streamlined choices with W3, which caused W2 to lose its charm for the sake of W3 being standalone, W2 as a game became meaningless to me which I loved before. oh, you just reminded me. As wonderful as W3 was, I never got over that they just ignored the fact that I spared and released Saskia from Filippa's influence. That was a bummer. Yeah I didn't like how Roche, who was never a big deal in my playthrough of W2, gets foisted on me like some old friend whereas Iorveth ma bro never appears. I mean, do they ever even mention what happened with the Pontar Valley in W3 if you freed it in W2? Are they conquered and destroyed by Nilfgard or Redania? Do they become a puppet state like Temeria can become? Do they just get ignored by all sides? A mention would have been nice... I rolled with Iorveth as well, but I didn't find Roche to be too welcoming. I remembered they referenced Saskia's Free State in W3. I think it was conquered by one of the main superpowers. Nilfgaard I think, but I might be wrong. It did suck though, as that meant that your actions in 2nd game had no meaning at all.

Someone should make a song about that one! :D Exactly, getting married to your character's equipment isn't something I'd consider overly healthy ^^ Just about everything; getting those extra starting levels always felt nice since I could start throwing off cool abilities earlier, and ME2 is the type of game you want to experiment with in terms of story, so you'll want to get that renegade save from ME1 to store your renegade decisions for your renegade ME2 Shepard. Not to mention the importance I personally place on continuity in such a game, which effectively renders me unable to just reroll my Shepard's class and appearance and still fully enjoy the game. Editing the save-game files on the other hand makes me feel dirty and would nag on me every time I look at the character, again rendering me incapable of getting immersed into the experience. I see. In ME I was always a strong paragon guy and had no interest of doing renegade playthrough. I always make a backup of my saves, so I have never run into an issue of not having a valid save for ME2. The good news for PoE2 is that it shouldn't be an issue. In one of the streams Josh mentioned that you will be able to either import your save, or start new character and decide what choices were made in previous game. If I understood it correctly that means you can do second playthrough and see different outcomes without having to replay PoE1.

On the other hand CDPR ignored/streamlined choices with W3, which caused W2 to lose its charm for the sake of W3 being standalone, W2 as a game became meaningless to me which I loved before. oh, you just reminded me. As wonderful as W3 was, I never got over that they just ignored the fact that I spared and released Saskia from Filippa's influence. That was a bummer.

I am pretty sure the answer is no, they won't be transferred. Whenever they will be destroyed, or stolen and reappear later in the game, or if they will have their essence sucked out of them I think we can safely assume that you will be lvl 1, and you will be stripped of any equipment you had. It is just a nature of RPGs. And it is a good thing. Once I used the exploit at the beginning of Baldur's Gate 2, to save my favourite gear from Baldur's Gate 1. Yeah, it was nice to see those items back, but they completely broke half of the game. It is no fun when you are overpowered.

Just from curiosity, what interaction between ME1&ME2 are you talking about? It has been a while since I played it so it might have slipped my mind. I remember there were some small story related transfers (did you sacrifice humans or council, some small emails/references to previous games). As far as the story in concerned I am a big believer in having choices in previous game being reflected in later installments. If it is not a continues story, then make a different game. Or at least new character. As it is a direct sequel to the Watcher's story, I do want the first game to have some effect on the sequel.

True, it is always disappointing when sequels invalidate previous decisions. Sadly to some extand it is impossible to avoid as in some world changing scenarios you would have to develop multiple seperate games. Luckily I think PoE2 will be fine. The changes you made were local only, and we are moving to a different region. I hope that the state of Dyrwood will be referenced, and you will see results of your actions but being set in a different part of the world it doesn't need to be more expansive.

One of the stretchgoals included Italian localization, right? (2.2M$) It is funded so you will get it. Unless you are asking for full VO... I wouldn't count on that.

I just want a good world to explore in fallout2 style. And I want Firaxis to finally make Pirates!2 to fullfil my pirating need.

I believe they mentioned they are looking and redesigning spells. They also mentioned they experiment with how you use spells (per rest, per encounter) and are adding an empowerment system. I am sure they will be working on it for a while, so don't expect to see specific responses until they are done with it. You will have multiclassing which is huge. You can try and play with that, plus you will have specialisations for each class. Higher level cap. Or just try different class.

It is easy to love Ydwin when other female companions are masculine ones. You are playing a party of serial killers. I don't see a cute anime girl in there without being a monster in a disguise.

Now that point is interesting to me. Because I knew all that, and still was a bit of a victim of wanting BG3. On paper, PoE was eveything I wanted - new world, new game, new character. The problem was, on surface it was very similar to BG. The structure, artistic design, gameplay. While I played it, I was thinking - "well, it is not really 'fun,'" or "wow it is unnecessarly grim." I think I would have easier time getting into it, if the setting was visually more disconnected from what I remember of IE games. It was a tribute to those games, while at the same time taking a different direction. Playing it for the first time was weird - on one hand a nostalgia trip, while not being familiar at all.

I didn't backpedal into 'technically everything can be called political', politics is an umbrella term for all sorts of politics. And I *was* talking about real life politics, family politics, office politics and corporate politics *are* real life politics, they're just no state-level politics. I really don't see how people have such trouble making the distinction, the word politics is very commonly in use for all these contexts. Also, I really don't give a flying **** what you call the underlying phenomenon, I was trying to communicate an idea, and I expect it to be treated as such. Getting hung up over a word and refusing to see the context is not only dishonest, it's idiotic. I really have no interest in arguing about the meaning of a word, just accept the meaning that is given in the context and use it to familiarize yourself with the presented idea, then comment on that idea. If you think a word is being misused, you're free to mention that as a side note, but if that is the only thing you are willing to contribute to the discussion, you'd be doing everyone a favor by not responding at all. Now, english is not my first language, so I double checked if there is an additional meaning of politics outside government which I don't know about. According to oxford dictionary there is one non government related definition: 'often the politics of - The principles relating to or inherent in a sphere or activity, especially when concerned with power and status. ‘the politics of gender’ So yeah, I think you misused the term and the mention of SJW pushed it even further. Unless you imply there is some power struggle among game devs or Obsidian itself and that the "lets make more character builds valiable" is a result of that. But ok, lets talk in terms of the game design. There are systems which game designer like to avoid. If a game system doesn't add depth to the game, or doesn't offer a choice it is usually a badly designed system. An example I like is manual purchase of guns and ammo in XCOM: UFO DEFENCE. It was a tidius work. They were cheap enough so you could always afford them. There were no choice regarding what clip or what gun you had. You just had to remember to buy those so you wont send your squan barehanded. As the result, Firaxis' XCOM remake and unofficial Xenonauts remake removed this system. Why? It wasn't a choice, it even wasn't management. Just busywork. The thing is I liked it. It was hilarious to get lost in everything and send you squad to the mission and then evacuate once you realized they have no ammo. But it wasn't good game design. D&D Infinity Engine games were mostly combat focused. Yes, you could build wizard with low constitution, or rogue with low dexterity, or fighter with low strengh and constitution. But that is the point? With the way classes are designed you won't get significant bonus for putting your spare points in other areas. Now in fallout it was differently. Game would give you special dialogue if you were an idion. Not always worse one. You could be a killing god, but you also could use your charisma or smarts. Being horrible in combat made sense and was valid. Being bad in combat in PoE or BG is not valid. I will not go as far to say that PoE system is better than D&D and I understand complains that the system wasn't as impactful. But it gains flexibility which wasn't there before. It is a traid off, and considering that the combat is not really optional I would say it is for the better of the game. It is a system which better fits the overall game design.

Any SF setting, steampunk setting might be cool (yay for Arcanum2). Of course I would love a full on StarWars RPG. Lovely/broken Alpha Protocol was so interesting I would want them to experiment with different genres. Noir RPG might be cool (detective work, rather than combat character build - from cold and logical Holmes to deceptive, following intuition Sam Spade), historical setting might be interesting (no fantasy element). Current day RPG? RPG is such an interesting way of telling a story and there are so many stories outside fantasy adventure you can tell. I want more of those.

Ok, there is so much wrong with this post: arbitrary political view of the "there should not be bad builds" and "every build is equal" Since when game design means politics? They want to give you more freedom of roleplaying and opening the way of building your character. The problem with D&D is that there is a good way of building character and a bad way. Class define what will you do, and certain classes require certain stats. Therefore, no you don't have a choice. You cant build a wizard with low intelligence. If there is a one good way of building character and all other are bad, then why to have a choice at all? Josh mentioned he isn't a fan of class based system at all, and maybe it is why. In something like fallout&fallout2, you build character and then decide what he will become. In here you choose a class and then give him stats which allow him to do, what he does best. To open up roleplaying possibilities they decided spread importance of stats to be similar for every class. Yes, it does create new problems. No, it is not a political statement. pathetic ideas that revolve around "communicating with the players to see what they want" and "working together to come up ideas" and "respecting every point of view as equals" have resulted in a steady stream of extremely uninspired and uninspiring games. I guess you never worked in creative field. There is no weakness in listening to feedback. Yes, you need to respect your artistic vision and keep in sight a goal you want to achieve. However, listening to feedback is not the same as betraying your artistic vision. No matter if you are a film director, game developer, musician, painter you always create for someone, for audience. It might be a narrow audience, but it is still someone. You always serve. If you want to see what masterpieces you get when you shut down all criticism and do what you believe is good just look up "games" by Digital Homocide Studios. Believe me, there is no thing more difficult than throwing out an idea you are attatched to, or one you worked on for a long time.

Great post. I certainly don't think that your complains are invalid, and there are quite with which I agree with. I did have a hard time making my way through PoE even though I enjoyed it every time I played it. I felt it was underdeveloped. The thing is, my complains for the game are usual for the first game in the series and bear some signes of a game funded by kickstarter. My biggest complain was that the game felt underdeveloped. Quest weren't as elaborate and reactive as I expected from Obsidian RPG. It was a big game, but shallow - lots of areas were farily empty with no significant importance. The game seemed big for big sake. It was also fairly conservative, while I always like about Obsidian that they did try new and cool things, rather than following set formula. I was disappointed with the scripted interactions (story books segments.) When I saw them for the first time, I imagined a creative and versitile way they could be used. They never reached their potential. For the most part they were interactions you could simply win by having one of the one-use item like hook and rope or crawbar. The story is the interesting thing. I wasn't a big fan of it as it was going on. I wasn't engaged by it. It was clever. Using old and tired tropes and reimagining in an interisting way. However, I got very Dragon Age vibe from it. Being dark, broody and vague without having the point. Now, the ending is what changed it for me. It is a shame, you didn't push through, as I strongly believe that the ending pays off for a lot of the problems the game had. Storylines reveal common themes, the small sidequests bring you the knowledge of the world to understand games main point and it all very nicely ties together. From dull but solid became one of the most thought provoking games I played in a while. Now, the good ending doesn't invalit previous concerns. A lot of story telling is done by plain writing and I believe the problem is in lack of reactivity/weak quest design. You talk a lot, and learn a lot but rarely influence or are part of anything important. Even when you do (finale of second act) it is all the smoke screen, invalidating choices you made just after you made them. It is all bad, but it also very smells like the first game in the series. Building engine, figuring world, themes and mechanics and not enough time to flesh out what was built. Here is me hoping that sequel will fix those problems. Also stronghold. It was weak, and felt like kickstarter promise fulfilled rather than sensible addition to the game. and so did Caed Nua dungeon. It was a lengthy and visually cool but lacked interesting content. Enemies you fought were just enemies you would fight outside, with no twist. Later stages felt especially added for the sake of floor length rather than meaningful contet. Adra dragon was cool though. I found expansions to be the best part of the game, with more interesting quests, better designed locals, and better told story. Scripted interactions were much better utilized. If Deadfire will be on the level of White March I will be happy with it, and I still hope they will do better!

And that is why you carry a limited amount of camping supplies. You can replenish all your spells, all your health and remove all your injuries up to two times per dungeon without finding more, or backtracking to buy more. This way you are encouraged to play smart without roadblocking your way. It is there to make you engage with the game mechanics without breaking your balls whenever you make bad decision. I really don't get your reasoning. That way you can complain on anything. Why do we have combat at all when we reload? I imagine devs decided that just killing off your favourite companions and your character and forcing you to restart is not something they want to do. Allowing you to fall constantly in battle and have no effect what so ever is not something they want either. I don't think you can do much else without redesigning entire genre. It is not darkest dungeon where all your adventurers are expandable.

Ok, I can't agree that injury + endurance/health system has no consequnce. It is a soft consequnce - we are not playing iron-man xcom campaign. We are playing a story driven game with a very finite amount of written companions. Naturally loosing them so easily means loosing an important chunk of the game. I don't mind reloading, if I fail. However, loosing a combat because my main character had a bad rool on a spell and died pretty much instantly (not so much in PoE but VERY common in BG) was stupid. Same with loosing a companion. The benefit of injuries in PoE: you played carelessly, you will start the next battle with disadvantage. It might be an unimportant debuff (like a debuff to constitution for my mage) or it might lower and important stat. Failure had different stages, and different punishments. Full party wipe was the most extreme, but if I got careless and got my DPS and spellcaster down, they would get weaker. That would be especially noticable, if a character was "revived" multiple times in one battle. Everytime, he would come back weaker. I don't like Tyranny injury system, because I get punished without really knowing what I could do to avoid it. Getting a health debuff in the first encouter even though I wipe them out completely was annoying.

I disagree. I found IE games to encourage a lot of quickloading. Having a perma death, and one healthpool means you can dies within seconds. That means either adding option to resurect (which is a pain - either making death pointless, or annoying if you have to backtrack.) For me PoE found a sweet spot. Being knocked out mattered (injury upon being knocked out,) but even if a companion or two fell during the combat I could still continue on, but with a consequence of having an injury penalty, which I could remove but spending camping supplies. Also, endurance meant that in longer engagements you could just heal your tanks' endurance infinitely, as they would run out of health eventually. Overall, I thought it was an elegant solution. Tyranny mechanic though felt weird to me. When I got injury in PoE I knew why, and I knew how I could have avoided it. In Tyranny you would just get them. It felt very artificial for me, and a bit annoying. I just don't see an advantage of using Tyranny's injury system.

I like injuries the way they were implimented into PoE1 - penelty for being kocked out. This way being knocked out had consequences but still didn't make a big deal out of it. I thought that health/indurence system was the best fix to the problem Infinity Style games had for a while. In IE games being knocked out usually required a quickload (or resurect which was just annoying.) On they other hand games like KOTOR has no consequnces of being kocked out. PoE found a sweet middle ground for me. I would suggest better explaning the mechanics in the intro of PoE2 rather than changing the system too much (not a fan of injury system of Tyranny.)

Yeah, witcher is more marketable. All things said and done... would Obsidian even want to go AAA? That would mean working in much much bigger team, tailoring game to appeal to much bigger audience, spending obscene amount of money on marketing, making deals with publishers.